Introduction

• Big Data algorithms might create digital dictatorships in which all power is concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite while most people suffer not from exploitation but from something far worse—irrelevance.
• Unless you are happy to entrust the future of life to the mercy of quarterly revenue reports, you need a clear idea what life is all about.

Part I: The Technological Challenge

Chapter 1: Disillusionment

• Humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better.
• To be suddenly left without any story is terrifying. Nothing makes any sense.
• Humans were always far better at inventing tools than using them wisely.
• Ordinary people may not understand artificial intelligence and biotechnology, but they can sense that the future is passing them by.
• It is much harder to struggle against irrelevance than against exploitation.
• In fact, when it comes to free trade and international cooperation, Xi Jinping looks like Obama’s real successor.
• But I have yet to meet a single person who dreams of immigrating to Russia.
• One option might be to completely give up on having a global story of any kind and instead seek shelter in local nationalist and religious tales.
• For the first time in history, infectious diseases kill fewer people than old age, famine kills fewer people than obesity, and violence kills fewer people than accidents.
• But liberalism has no obvious answers to the biggest problems we face: ecological collapse and technological disruption.
• Just as the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution gave birth to the novel ideologies of the twentieth century, so the coming revolutions in biotechnology and information technology are likely to require fresh visions.
• Any story that seeks to gain humanity’s allegiance will be tested above all in its ability to deal with the twin revolutions in infotech and biotech.
• The technological revolution might soon push billions of humans out of the job market and create a massive new “useless class,” leading to social and political upheavals that no existing ideology knows how to handle.

Chapter 2: Work

• We have no idea what the job market will look like in 2050.